Downton Abbey returns with a bang!!

Thank you Julian Fellowes for your brilliant writing!

And thank you to the awesome cast for bringing to life such wonderful characters that have found their way into our hearts. Loved the first episode of the second season of Downton Abbey!

My favourite moment: Matthew and Mary's emotional reunion!

Video: Behind scenes of FROM TIME TO TIME

FROM TIME TO TIME was the directorial debut of Julian Fellowes with a cast that includes Alex Etel (Cranford), Maggie Smith, Dominic West, Timothy Spall, Eliza Bennett, Carice van Houten, Hugh Bonneville, Harriet Walter, Pauline Collins, Christopher Villiers, Elisabeth Dermot Walsh

Now available on DVD

Great cast, great film!

More articles here

Downton Abbey - Fellowes' own family history & Thomas talks of war

~ September 18th ~
Return of Downton Abbey on ITV in UK
AND
Emmy awards in USA with 11 nominations

Woe to Emmy voters if they do not hand the award to Dame Maggie Smith.
She deserves it if only for "Best Performance in a Swivel Chair", let alone her witty one-liners and habit of stealing every scene she's in!

Recent Articles:
Julian Fellowes: My family inspired Downton Abbey
He said at one point one of the returning characters is asked how "things are going in the war" and he can only reply: "Do you know the thing is I just can't talk about it"...
read entire article at The Telegraph

Downton Abbey: The Great War
"DOWNTON Abbey star Rob James-Collier admits he was shocked when he researched the latest twist in his TV career...The nightmare 1916 world of The Somme is about as far from genteel Downton as you can get. And there, among the muddied and bloodied faces, are ex-Manchester solicitor and heir Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens) and Thomas Barrow, played by Rob."
Downton's historical advisor Alastair Bruce shared his personal insight with cast members of his time spent in the Falklands War. “It’s a conversation I’ll never forget,” recalls Rob. “The most amazing, exhilarating and sad conversation I’ve ever had in my life. It helped me immensely to get in the mindset. It couldn’t not. "
read entire article on Life with Wylie

more on Season 2 of Downton Abbey

Downton Abbey - images from 1st episode of new season

Countdown to the second season of Downton Abbey on ITV is only 2 weeks away! (Sept. 18)

Thanks to Evangeline of Edwardian Promenade who found these images at Spoiler TV and a detailed description of the first episode. Spoiler beware!



SHORT SYNOPSIS of Episode 1 (the non-spoilerish one)

The Great War unsettles life at Downton and Isobel's surprising news about Matthew rocks the family further. New maid, Ethel ruffles O'Brien's feathers and Bates returns with life changing news for Anna.

More information on Season 2 of Downton Abbey

(which is an ITV production although many assume it's put out by the BBC)

Photos: Nick Briggs

Gosford Park (2001)

Written by Julian Fellowes, directed by Robert Altman and with an unbelievably stellar cast, Gosford Park, is worth a visit if you've not already seen it! This drama takes place over a weekend at a shooting party of a 1930s English country house where a murder takes place and the history of the guests within is gradually revealed as the plot unfolds. [This has been on my list of faves for a while, finally getting around to adding more details.]

CAST: Eileen Atkins, Helen Mirren, Clive Owen, Maggie Smith, Kelly Macdonald, Alan Bates. Charles Dance, Stephen Fry, Michael Gambon, Richard E. Grant, Derek Jacobi, Jeremy Northam, Ryan Philippe, Kristin Scott Thomas, Emily Watson, Geraldine Sommerville, Claudie Blakley, James Wilby, Camilla Rutherford, Tom Hollander, Sophie Thompson, and Bob Balaban (one of creators of film)

Synopsis:
"In November 1932, Sir William McCordle is having a shooting party at his country estate. He is married to the Earl of Carton's eldest daughter, Sylvia. They have one child, a daughter, named Isobel. He has a little dog np-one likes named Pip. They've invited Sylvia's two sisters and their husbands, her Aunt Constance the Countess of Trentham, and a number of other young men (married and unmarried) for the shooting, as well as William's distant cousin, matinee idol Ivor Novello, and his American friend, Charlie Chan producer Maurice Weissman.

Accompanying the upstairs guests are their servants--chauffeurs, valets to dress the men, lady's maids to dress the women. They join the below-stairs staff at Gosford Park, commanded by the fearsome dour Mrs Wilson the housekeeper, Jennings the butler, and Mrs Croft the sour old cook.

We see this world where upstairs and downstairs collide through the eyes of Lady Trentham's new maid, a young Scottish girl named Mary MacEachran. Mary is very young, and utterly inexperienced, and quickly befriends head housemaid Elsie, and Lord Stockbridge's valet, the mysterious Robert Parks. Also in attendance is Weissman's valet, the smarmy yet very pretty Henry Denton, with his bowler hat and wandering accent.

Sir William loves country sports, even though his is awful at them. William as nouveaux riche, and he and his wife cannot actually stand one another. Isobel fancies Lord Rupert, but Rupert is a young son and worried Sir William will think he's only after Isobel's money. Rupert's hanger-on friend Jeremy Blond is using Rupert as his entree into society, and is really just there to get a taste of the high life. Freddie Nesbitt blackmailed Isobel into getting him an invitation, in the hopes that the week-end will result in his getting a job as one of William's bakers. His hopelessly middle class wife Mabel is overawed by the company, and very much a fan. Sylvia's sister Lavinia married a hopeless Naval Commander who adores his wife but is a wreck in business, and William is hoping to get out of the week-end without having to tell Cmdr. Meredith he's pulling out of his investment scheme. Ivor is playing the piano for his supper, and Morris thinks the whole upper crust world is too hilarious for words, and is mining it for research for his next picture, Charlie Chan in London.

Then in the middle of the second night, Sir William is murdered. Twice.

Mary alone is in the position of putting all the pieces together--from overheard servants gossip, to a midnight confession sealed with a kiss, to Lady Sylvia recounting the house's history to her sister as if Mary was invisible and a piece of furniture in the corner. And it's up to Mary to decide which secrets to keep or share."

Photos and more details at this Gosford Park fansite
Land of Might-Have-Been

CHARACTERS:
Above Stairs
Below Stairs
Visiting Staff
The Police

Julian Fellowes' TITANIC begins filming!

The 4-part series of Titanic scheduled to air next year on its centenary begins production today!

Observer: An exhibition at the O2 in London, has been seen by more than 22 million people worldwide in 17 years. Julian Fellowes was inspired by some of the thousands of poignant possessions recovered from the seabed. "You suddenly get such a flash of real men, real women, real children, all [going across] the ocean for their different reasons. Looking at [these objects], their death is all the more moving."

The mini-series will not seek to equal Cameron's special effects, Fellowes said. "So it is a more human look at the picture. One of the great advantages of television is that you have much more time. You can develop these other characters that would probably be [condensed] … and discarded if you were having to fit into the 100-minute format."

Bravery, courage and bad behaviour, he says, were demonstrated by members of each of the classes on board: "Some people are tremendously heroic and some people are not. That was as true in first as in second, as in steerage." But he added that the officers "were a pretty admirable bunch on the whole".

"Normally you have to sit through the whole thing before the boat sinks. We sink it every week. But only in the last episode do we find out who lives and who dies." [Fellowes, Seattle Times]

From ITV's PRESS RELEASE:

"Lookout Point, ITV Studios, Deep Indigo Productions, Sienna Films and Mid Atlantic Films announce the first day of principal photography on TITANIC. The all-star ensemble miniseries from the creative minds of Nigel Stafford – Clark and Julian Fellowes will be shot over ten-weeks in Budapest and on location around the city.

Written by Oscar-winning screenwriter Julian Fellowes and directed by Jon Jones (Northanger Abbey, Diary of Anne Frank), the 4 x 60’ series is produced by Nigel Stafford-Clark (Bleak House, The Passion) and Chris Thompson (The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Love Actually).

TITANIC is the extraordinary re-telling of that doomed voyage, cleverly weaving action, mystery and romantic plots featuring fictional and historical characters, before coming together in an explosive and unforgettable finale.

TITANIC was originated by Nigel Stafford-Clark’s Deep Indigo Productions and international co-production specialist Lookout Point, who teamed up with ITV Studios to further develop the project. Working with distributor ITV Studios Global Entertainment, the project has since attracted a host of global partners including US Network ABC and ITV1, the UK’s largest commercial broadcaster. The project is produced as a treaty co-production between the UK, Hungary and Canada.

Simon Vaughan, Chief Executive of Lookout Point and Executive Producer of TITANIC explains, “The goal is to mount a global co-production that does not look or feel like one. The material itself straddles the world. Working with ITV Studios Global Entertainment we have pulled together over a dozen separate sources of finance – but we are producing a miniseries with a clear creative voice: an authored piece from a wonderful creative team.”

Julian Fellowes has a unique take on the story presenting a rounded, human version of life on board the ship, encapsulating the society in which she existed and providing a comprehensive portrayal of all the passengers and crew. Whilst James Cameron’s 1997 film was primarily a love story between the two central characters, Fellowes was inspired by the hundreds of poignant untold stories of those aboard and the miniseries will show the bravery, courage and sometimes bad behavior demonstrated by all sorts of passengers and crew, using both fictionalized and real-life characters.

Following on from Gosford Park and Downton Abbey, TITANIC will feature Fellowes’s trademark ensemble cast of leading stage and screen actors, flowing camerawork and interweaving multi-arc storylines, as viewers get to know the multi-class, multi-nationality characters, brought to life by a huge company of no less than 89 actors, including Linus Roache, Celia Imrie, Toby Jones, Geraldine Somerville and Timothy West.

Production designer Rob Harris (Generation Kill, Hornblower, The Devil’s Whore) has created an extraordinary 2-tier set, housing a 60m promenade deck, 50m boat deck, 4 working lifeboats, 2 collapsible lifeboats, the ship’s bridge and pursers’ offices, stairways, 75m of interior corridors and over a dozen separate interior rooms - from boiler rooms to dining rooms, third-class bunkrooms to first-class suites. Director Jon Jones says, “It’s an incredible, evocative playing space. We have built a huge section of the ship, that is jam packed with a warren of rooms arranged to allow us a sense that we have the run of the ship. Once you enter the studio, it is like boarding the ship - you get a real sense of the space. We want to get to grips with how it really was to be confined in a tiny cabin in steerage – or effortlessly ensconced in a First Class stateroom. Our set allows us to really enter that world.”

To deliver the key water sequences, the team has built the biggest indoor tank in mainland Europe, on the outskirts of Budapest. This vast 900m2 water tank features a sliding immersible section of the ship’s deck and interior, and a huge 360º green screen backdrop.

A project of this scale cannot be achieved without CGI, the storylines include scenes in London, the shipyard in Ireland, and the Southampton departure dock and on to open water. VFX Supervisor Tom Turnbull of Rocket Science (The Nativity, The Day of the Triffids, National Treasure) is recreating the huge gantry cranes and the imposing cathedral-like brick and sandstone Victorian building which housed Harland & Wolff’s headquarters, and of course the arresting sight of the grandest ship ever built."

Read more about cast

Cast announced for Titanic series

Linus Roache, (Law & Order, The Wings of the Dove), and Geraldine Somerville, (Aristocrats, Harry Potter), will be heading up the cast of Titanic (with screenplay by Julian Fellowes), joined by performers including Celia Imrie, Toby Jones, Perdita Weeks, Lee Ross, Jenna-Louise Coleman and Sophie Winkleman.

Also among the ensemble cast will be Steven Waddington, David Calder, James Wilby, Antonio Margo, Dragos Bucur, Stephen Campbell Moore, Noah Reid, Lyndsey Marshal, Mark Lewis Jones, Ruth Bradley, Peter McDonald and Sylvestra Le Touzel.

Row 1: Linus Roache,Geraldine Sommerville,Lee Ross, Jenna-Louise Coleman, Celia Imrie.
Row 2: Sophie Winkleman, Noah Reid, Perdita Weeks, Mark Lewis Jones, Toby Jones
Row 3: Ruth Bradley, Steven Waddington, Sylvestra Le Touzel, Antonio Margo, Stephen Campbell Moore
Row 4: James Wilby, Lyndsey Marshal,Peter McDonald, David Calder, Dragos Bucur

More information on TITANIC series

Romeo & Juliet (2011)

Hailee Steinfeld is in talks to star in an indie adaptation of Romeo & Juliet.

My curiosity is piqued since Shakespeare's screenplay has been adapted by Julian Fellowes! (Young Victoria, Gosford Park, Downton Abbey)
To be steered by Italian director Carlo Carlie (Flight of the Innocent) with Gabriele Muccino (Seven Pounds) attached as a producer.
IMDb

Update: Holly Hunter in negotiations to join cast (she's been cast as the nurse)
Update: Ed Westwick cast as Tybalt
Kodi Smit-McPhee in talks to play Benvolio, Romeo's cousin

Not entirely sure how this adaptation will be different from previous ones?
Shooting is expected to begin in Italy later this spring.

Agatha Christie's 'Crooked House' adapted for film

Crooked House, one of Agatha Christie's two favourite novels, is about to be made into a film with script written by Lord Julian Fellowes. The book is set just after WW2 and will be directed by Neil Labute, with filming to take place later this year in London.

Fellowes said: "I love the period, I love Agatha Christie and I love the idea of reinventing it. It will be exciting to work with a really vivid, contemporary director – he's one of the originals around at the moment."

To current suggestions that Christie's tales have lost their appeal, Fellowes replied, "I love Christie and don't think it's at all dated," he said. "It's one of those things that never go stale: murder in a genteel setting appeals to audiences in Britain and around the world. I first read them as I was growing up. We had a holiday cottage in Ireland, and when I was 16 I discovered my first tranche of Agatha Christie novels."

Crooked House details the story of Charles Hayward who is told by his fiancee Sophie that she cannot marry him until her grandfather’s killer is brought to justice.

Cast includes: Julie Andrews, Gemma Arterton, Matthew Goode, Gabriel Byrne

Source: Independent
Article in Guardian with director Neil Labute

Titanic series - update

Update on the new "Titanic" series:
Casting is yet to be announced but the 4-hour series will start filming on location in Hungary this spring.

Penned by Lord Julian Fellowes, it will focus "on the lives of different characters ranging from steerage passengers to upper class guests as the ship begins to founder, the drama takes viewers on a journey through the last hours of Titanic’s maiden voyage in 1912." [THR]

It will air in USA (ABC) and Canada (Global) followed by premieres in Australia (Channel Seven), Ireland (TV3), New Zealand (TVNZ) Portugal (SIC) Sweden (SVT) and U.K. (ITV1).

Helen Mirren and Romola Garai are names currently being mentioned as possible cast members...

It's expected to air around the time of the centenary of the Titanic's sinking - April 2012.

The Serpent and the Moon - miniseries?

Princess Michael of Kent has asked Sir Julian Fellowes to adapt her novel The Serpent and the Moon, set during the French Renaissance, into an 8-part miniseries.

She's quoted in The Telegraph: "It has been picked up by a producer and been optioned to be an eight–part series. I have written an outline and I am hoping Julian will write it. His wife has been my chief lady-in-waiting for 25 years, so no pressure...The agents are talking. If Julian can, I know he will."

Book synopsis from Amazon.uk:
"Set against the stunning backdrop of Renaissance France, The Serpent and the Moon is a true story of love, war, intrigue, betrayal, and persecution. At its heart is one of the world's greatest love stories: the lifelong devotion of King Henri II of France to Diane de Poitiers, a beautiful aristocrat who was nineteen years older than her lover. At age fourteen, Henri was married to fourteen-year-old Catherine de' Medici, an unattractive but extremely wealthy heiress who was to bring half of Italy to France as her dowry. When Catherine met Henri on her wedding day, she fell instantly in love, but Henri could see no one but the beautiful Diane. When Henri eventually became king, he and Diane ruled France as one. Meanwhile, Catherine took as her secret motto the words "Hate and Wait" and lived for the day Diane would die and she could win Henri's love and rule by his side. Fate had another plan. Her Royal Highness Princess Michael of Kent, herself a descendant of both Catherine and Diane, imbues this seldom-told story with an insider's grasp of royal life. The Serpent and the Moon is a fascinating love story as well as a richly woven history of an extraordinary time."

About the Author (from Amazon.uk):
Her Royal Highness, Princess Michael of Kent (born Marie Christine Agnes Hedwig Ida von Reibnitz) studied history and art history, served on the Board of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and for the past twelve years has pursued a successful lecture career, speaking on various historical subjects at museums and universities throughout the Europe, U.S. and Latin America. She lives with her husband Prince Michael of Kent in their apartment in Kensington Palace and their house in Gloucestershire.

What I'd like to know is what about the Titanic miniseries and Season 3 of Downton Abbey? As well as Fellowes' other projects mentioned previously - Emma and Nelson, Greek Fire and The Vanderbilts? I would think he's already busy enough!

> read more about Julian Fellowes